About Me

70 now and our five wonderful years aboard our narrowboat Skyy seem along time ago. Jacquie, allowed me to build my replica three wheeler kit car, which was a great success. Now it's time to start on a bigger project and that is to make a good Triumph Stag even better, here goes.

Wednesday, 20 May 2009

NOBBY UNNOBBLED

MONDAY 11TH MAY 2009

Time to retrace our passage, but not before we took SKYY to the Round House and turned her about. Yesterday I had sussed out exactly where I wanted to put SKYY’s bow when we turned as the space was limited and I could see how shallow the water was in places. All went well this morning and we were soon on our way downstream, traveling much easier with the stream behind us now, but after the calm of Sunday the winds had returned, blowing in the opposite direction to last week, so it was still in my face for most of the journey.

We decided to push on to the delightfully named Tadpole Bridge and moor up by The Trout for the evening. On route, as we came through the bridge at Radcot, a very smart, red painted, traditional boat called NOBBY kept over to one side to let us clear the bridge and as he started to move over to line up with the bridge, his boat came to a dead stop as she ran aground, we must have passed over exactly the same place on our way upstream, but his boat had a deeper draft. I kept watching as slowly the distance between us grew and it became obvious that although the wind had swung his boat, so that he now faced downstream, he wasn’t coming unstuck. I turned SKYY round and eventually got into position and attached his bow line to my stern and without much of a struggle NOBBY slipped free. The owner was very grateful, but I told him that having been aground for nearly three days, last year, I couldn’t abandon him to a similar fate. Jacquie was just grateful that I had now got something to blogg on about.

We tied up at the moorings, reserved for patrons of the Trout, had a drink, just to prove our patronage, you understand, but returned to SKYY for dinner.